An internal circular of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) stated that during the 2019 presidential elections, the committee transmitted voting data from smart card readers to a central server.
The document, first published on social media on Wednesday morning by Reno Omokri, an opposition PDP officer, held a directive from INEC’s national secretary, Rose Oriaran-Anthony, to other senior committee representatives on the difficulties of transferring electoral accreditation information to a server.
“The commissioner has observed, with deep concerns, the number of smart card readers (SCRs) that do not have data of accredited voters in the just concluded presidential/NASS elections nationwide,” Ms Oriaran-Anthony said in the March 25 letter to all resident electoral commissioners (RECs) across the country.
The top electoral officer also noted in the memo that after the February 23 presidential election 4,786 smart card readers did not have data on accredited voters, representing about 4% of the total SCRs deployed for that exercise.
PROOF of INEC SERVER:
This is a circular from INEC to its 36 Resident Electoral Commissioners, threatening sanctions on RECs who fail to send data to INEC HQ through their server. INCONTROVERTIBLE evidence @INECNigeria has and had a server.#IncontrovertibleProofOfINECServer pic.twitter.com/pcCjcgKS3O
— Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) July 10, 2019
“Attached is the chart, showing the PUs (polling units) not uploaded to the SCR accreditation backend, for each of the states,” Ms Oriaran-Anthony added in the memo.
Ms Oriaran-Anthony then directed all interested RECs to liaise with their authorities for technical and electoral activities to explain why on election day accreditation information was not uploaded by card readers. They were provided to submit their responses until March 28.
Festus Okoye, an INEC spokesman, declined a number of journalists ‘ efforts to get his remarks on the internal memo.
The document marks yet another pressure on the governing body as to whether or not a central server was used on election day to obtain information from polling units across the nation.
The commission has insisted that it was not in possession of any central server for the conduct of the election, saying doing so would have contradicted the Electoral Act. INEC maintained the position despite overwhelming claim to the contrary by some of its presiding officers in the election.
Many of the presiding officers and their subordinates have since signed an affidavit to testify against the commission in favor of Atiku Abubakar, the candidate of the PDP and the major contender to President Muhammadu Buhari, who was declared the winner of the election.
Other evidence also shows that INEC budgeted nearly N1.5 billion for server facilities ahead of the presidential election.
But the committee informed the election tribunal that it had no server, and Mr Abubakar and his party were mischievous. A former INEC chairperson, Attahiru Jega, also indicated that there was no server at INEC during his days and expressed doubts about any resent installation of such installations under Yakubu Mahmood.
Mr Abubakar’s legal team said the opposition leader won the presidential election but was rigged out by INEC officials who allegedly compromised to return Mr Buhari to power.
The election tribunal rejected Mr Abubakar’s application to inspect INEC’s server last month, stating that granting such an order would presuppose the court had ruled that the server actually existed.
The tribunal deferred the server’s pronouncement until both teams made an adequate argument in the substantive petition. Last week, the petitioner started calling its witnesses.